No government quota seats in private colleges for MBBS and BDS

5/31/2016

BENGALURU: Here is a bad news for students, 12 private medical colleges and 24 dental colleges which come under the umbrella of COMEDK will not share its MBBS and BDS seats for government quota from this year. The Karnataka Professional Colleges Foundation (KPCF) announced this decision on Thursday. This means the common entrance test conducted by Karnataka Examination Authority will be valid only to fill the seats in 15 government medical colleges.

MR Jayaram, secretary of KPCF told reporters that this year NEET will be conducted to fill the MBBS and BDS seats in private colleges and all these developments (SC's direction of conducting NEET and NEET ordinance) have taken place after the consensual agreement was signed between KPCF and the state government to share the seats. "But now since NEET is conducted for private colleges this consensual agreement is invalid," he said.

He said as per the Supreme Court directions 15% seats will be reserved for NRI students. Of the remaining 85% seats, not even a single seat will be shared as government quota in the private colleges.

Recently, the union health minister JP Nadda, after the NEET ordinance was passed has stated that the government quota seats will remain the same in private colleges. But KPCF pointed out that in the ordinance it is mentioned that there will be government quota, but no where it is mentioned that what is government quota and about the percentage of seats to be reserved for government quota.

But the good news is, of the 85% seats (excluding NRI quota), 50% of the seats will be reserved for SC, ST and OBC categories. This means it would be easy for students belonging to this category to get medical and dental seats in private colleges. There are around 1,500 medical and 1,600 dental seats in private colleges.

AS Srikanth, chief executive of COMEDK said COMEDK will do the counselling for MBBS and BDS seats in private colleges after the NEET results are out and an oversee committee formed by the state government will monitor it, this will ensure more transparency. "We will follow the fee structure fixed by the Fee Fixation Committee, which is also formed by the government." The committee has already submitted the report to the government.

The counselling dates will be announced after the COMEDK results will be announced.